Hi Borries,
While I am not 100% sure about the back-end architecture of the websites, I
am pretty sure that they are using Linux with healthcare.gov, which is the
backbone of the whole ACA operation. According to netcraft, they are using
Linux and Akami (as their CDN).
With that said, in situations like this, it isn't the servers that crash
per se. A site like this (or like the various state exchanges) are going to
be heavy on the database usage side, and that is really where the slowdown
or glitches would start to appear. No website launch is perfect, especially
when you take a hit of 5-7 million people on the FIRST DAY! Mind you, many
of these aren't just people coming to read some text. They are starting the
process of signing up for healthcare coverage, so their load extends beyond
the static content on the front page and onto the dynamic (database driven)
content throughout the site and sign up process.
So, bottom line is that from what I can see, they already used Linux and
the biggest CDN out there (Akami). They just couldn't handle the massive
amount of people coming to the site all at once which is all to common for
a large website launch like this. There really was no way to avoid this
(other than a staged rollout which would have been difficult), but I
understand that the engineers are now going to scale the back-end out more
to accommodate for the increased demand here soon. That should alleviate
most of the problems. Keep in mind that they were planning for
approximately 11 million people to sign up over a period of 6 months. That
is less than two million per month. 5-7 million turned out on day one! That
speaks volumes about what the site was able to withstand (it never actually
crashed) and what the anticipated vs actual demand/interest in the ACA is.
Thanks,
E
On Sat, Oct 5, 2013 at 4:11 PM, Borries Demeler <demeler at biochem.uthscsa.edu
> wrote:
>> Does anyone have any insight why the websites for the new health insurance
> exchanges were unable to handle the high demand? (NB: no flames about
> Obamacare please). I am curious if this is a function of Microsoft web
> servers
> vs. Linux web servers. It seems to me that if you have enough bandwidth and
> a fairly recent computer with Linux having sufficient memory and multi-core
> architecture it would be quite difficult to bring such a server down. To
> phrase it
> differently, how much demand would you need to bring such a server down? A
> typical LAMP configuration should be able to hold up to pretty extreme
> demands.
>> On the other hand, this may not hold for even new versions of Microsoft
> webserver,
> but I don't know this. Is this an issue that could have been avoided by
> using
> Linux instead? Does anyone have any insights here?
>> -b.
> --
> _______________________________________________
> SATLUG mailing list
>SATLUG at satlug.org>http://alamo.satlug.org/mailman/listinfo/satlug to manage/unsubscribe
> Powered by Rackspace (www.rackspace.com)
>